


Roses; Love. (Asters; Patience)

by Cas_tellations



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Anniversary, Cute Ending, Fluff, Keith is bad at cooking, Keith says 'fuck' lots, M/M, Modern, married, writer!keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 03:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14127405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cas_tellations/pseuds/Cas_tellations
Summary: Inspired by the sentence prompt “The table is broken. There is icing on the ceiling. The stove is on fire. Explain.”It's Keith and Shiro's third anniversary, and Keith wants to make it special. He decided to make a cake, because how had can it be, really?





	Roses; Love. (Asters; Patience)

**Author's Note:**

> I saw this prompt on tumblr and couldn't stop laughing for 15 whole minutes. I wrote this with a stupid grin on my face the entire, time. It was nice to take a break from my long-ass hp x loki fic to write some cute fluffy married gays.   
> I hope you like this!! Happy reading.

**** It’s their anniversary and Keith wants to do something special. It’s early morning, the sun has yet to rise high enough in the sky to come streaming through their bedroom window. Keith is laying in bed, Shiro by his side, just waking up.

 

“Hey,” Shiro murmurs, voice still raspy with sleep.

 

“Hi,” Keith replies, a small smile playing across his lips. It’s early, Shiro won’t have to leave to go to work for a least an hour and a half.

 

“Happy three years.” Shiro says. He’s grinning, teeth showing and everything. The happiness is infectious, Keith can’t help but smile just as wide back, a warm feeling in his stomach. Three whole years of being with the man he loves with his entire heart. They’d met when they were children - Shiro’s family had moved to the outskirts of Seattle from his hometown in Osaka, Japan. Keith’s family just so happened to live next door.

 

They had been nine at the time, and bonded as they waited for the bus to school together each morning, rain or shine. They both collected Pokemon cards, and spent lots of their time playing with them. (Playing, and arguing over which Pokemon was better. For the record, Keith had been on team Mewtwo and Shiro on team Ditto.) They’d sit on the bus together, and even though they were in different classes, they’d always find each other at recess. 

 

They hadn’t gotten together until Shiro’s first year at university though. Keith had come home from his tiny apartment that he shared with his best friends and roommates, Pidge and Lance for Christmas, and had been surprised when the Shirogane family was invited over for dinner that evening. But he was eternally grateful that they had shown up when, sometimes between Keith’s second and third glass of red wine,  Shiro had cornered him under the mistletoe.

 

Now, three years, an apartment of their own and two cats later, Keith couldn’t be happier.

 

It hadn’t been easy, but they made it.

 

Shiro’s lips find Keith’s and he draws him close. Keith cups Shiro’s cheeks in his hands, and Shiro laces his fingers through Keith’s hair, pulling on it lightly.

 

Love. Undoubtedly, that’s the strongest emotion in the world. A four letter word, an intense feeling of deep affection but somehow  _ more  _ than that. It’s the feeling of pure, beautiful trust and care. It’s the knowledge that he would always have someone to count on, through the best moments of his life and through his worst.

 

Keith grabs at Shiro’s hands, lacing their fingers together and bringing their hands up to his mouth, breaking out of their heated kisses to lay an gentle, feather light kiss on the wedding band that encircles Shiro’s finger.

 

Shiro huffs with laughter, “I can’t believe that Hunk thinks  _ I’m  _ the sappy one in this relationship, when you’re here kissing the ring.”

 

Keith thinks back to when Shiro had proposed to him, when Shiro had rented out an entire movie theater room, and got them to play Keith’s favorite movie, with all their favorite snack available. And then, after that, Shiro had taken him to the beach a block away, and pointed up to the airplane that was flying with a huge banner streaming out behind it.

 

As Keith had been reading the giant “KEITH, WILL YOU MARRY ME?” letters in the sky, Shiro had gotten down on one knee in the sand, holding out a little box with a ring in it.

 

(After that, they had gone back to Keith’s apartment, where Lance and Pidge had set up rose petals and wine for them to come back to.)

 

“You’re thinking about the proposal, aren’t you?” Shiro laughs, watching Keith intently.

 

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

 

“You always get this stupid goofy smile on your face.”

 

Keith snorts, and ducks forwards to place a kiss on the tip of Shiro’s nose. And then another one on his cheek. And forehead. And then, when Shiro pouts his lips and waggles his eyebrows, keith places a careful kiss on his lips.

 

Yeah, this is love. This happiness. Shiro, knowing exactly what Keith is thinking without Keith saying anything. The matching wedding rings on their fingers, and the apartment that they’ve made their home. The comfort that they create within each other, a soft presence that Keith charishes with all his heart.

 

“You have to get up soon, or else you’ll be late for work.” Keith says pointedly, between kisses.

 

“Yeah. Now yet, though.” Shiro grabs onto Keith’s waist, flipping him onto his back and humming with content when Keith automatically lets his thighs part, allowing Shiro to slide between them. Shiro rubs his thumbs back and forth over Keith’s soft, pale skin of his waist. “You’re beautiful.” He says simply, though there’s a degree of awe wrapped around the words that takes Keith’s breath away.

 

Keith reaches up, grabbing the back of his husband’s neck and pulling him back down, enveloping his lips with his own.

 

They continue like that for some time, until Keith’s lips are red and swollen and his heart is beating so fast it feels like it might just pop out of his chest.

 

“You really have to get ready for work,” Keith says sternly, though it lacks anything real as his voice is so weak and lust-filled.

 

Shiro sighs, flopping over onto the empty space on the bed beside keith. “Why couldn’t we go on vacation like we did last year?”

 

“Because nobody could take care of the cats,” Keith grabs and pillow and half-heartedly throws it at Shiro, “maybe next year.”

 

“Hopefully.” Shiro sighs again, heavily, “maybe Disneyland?” 

 

“I was thinking a cruise somewhere. Maybe the Caribbean, but Disneyland is good, too.”  

 

Shiro tugs Keith onto his chest, wrapping his arms around his waist and hugging him tight, “as long as I’m with you, it doesn’t matter where we are.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Happiness surrounds them. Keith smiles into the side of Shiro’s neck, content with the way that Shiro is running his hands through his hair, smoothing it back against the pillow, the black contrasting greatly with the pale blue of the pillowcase.

 

“Hey Takashi…”

 

The hand on keith’s head stops. “Yes?”

 

“I love you.”

 

“I love you too.”

 

When Shiro finally does get out of bed, he’s got just over a half hour to get ready for work. Keith joins him in the shower. After a ‘Happy Anniversary’ blowjob and a bowl of cereal, Shiro is out the door, grabbing his briefcase and keys, planting a kiss to Keith’s forehead, and then he’s gone.

 

Just like that.

 

Keith pours himself another cup of coffee, grabs one of the chocolate chip cookies that Hunk had dropped off the previous day, and goes to the office, sitting at his desktop and staring at a work document. 

 

Milo, one of the two cats Shiro had come home with one day, jumps up on Keith’s lap and then steps onto the keyboard, adding a jumble of letters to the middle of the sentence that Keith is working on. Writer’s block has been kicking his ass lately, making it hard to get more than a few hundred words down before his brain turns to mush, rendering him incapable of getting past the seventy thousand word mark on his current novel. 

 

But it’s his job to write - he’s not a famous author, or anything like that, but he’s sold plenty of copies of the two books he’d managed to finish - and he refuses to let the writer’s block take up yet another day when he really needs to write.

 

Shiro helps, it’s always easier to write when Shiro’s just left, because Keith still has that warm, happy feeling in his stomach, but Shiro isn’t actually there, leaning over his shoulder, reading every word that Keith types. (Which has happened, in the past. That is, until Keith had made it a rule that when he was in the office with the door closed, Shiro was not to come in.) He lifts the cat off they keyboard, rolling his eyes when Milo pushes his head into Keith’s hand, purring loudly, asking for pets.

 

The cats love the office, for some reason or another. Their beds were there, along with a giant ‘cat hotel’ scratching post, that had several levels and toys hanging off of it. Casey, the tuxedo black cat, loves sleeping on the topmost platform, hissing at anybody who tries to disturb him. Milo however, sleeps curled up in a small ball in the cat bed.

 

When they first got Milo, Keith had allowed him to sleep in his and Shiro’s room, thinking that it would be nice to wake up to the friendly orange cat curled up between then. That idea quickly went away when Keith was awoken too many times the first night, with Milo pawing at his face, walking all over both him and Shiro, and trying to get under the heavy duvet. When Keith let him under the duvet, he’d lay down for a second and then immediately demand to be let out.

 

After that, Keith made sure to put him in the office at night.

 

He starts typing now, between sips of coffee and bites of cookie. He finds himself slipping into the writing zone easily, putting on the soundtrack to Narnia and letting the words flow from his hands, spinning tales of witches and wizards, dragons and magic.

 

He goes to the flower shop just after midday. The shop is close to the apartment, only a few blocks down, and he walks there in his sweatpants and muscle T-shirt, hair tied back in a lazy ponytail. He’s wearing flip flops.

 

Casey and Milo follow him. They’re both rescue cats, and even though the organization that they got them from had a policy that stated all their cats they adopted out had to be kept indoors at all times, neither Casey nor Milo enjoyed being cooped up day after day. Living on the ground floor, Shiro or Keith would prop open a window, allowing them to go outside. Whenever they went for a walk somewhere, the cats were sure to follow close behind.

 

The lady at the flower shop is kind, and once Keith mentions he’s getting flowers for his anniversary, she goes on and on about how different types of flowers mean different romantic things.

 

He leaves with a bouquet of red roses, as well as a large amount of bright blue-ish purple aster’s, because he couldn’t pick between love, desire and love, patience. (Because Shiro is always patient with him. Through the writing, the depressive episodes and the mood swings, Shiro is always there, patient and friendly as ever.) Once the flower shop told him that aster’s used to be used to drive away evil serpents, he bought both without a second thought.

 

He puts the flowers in two separate vases when he gets home, placing them in the center of their kitchen table, and then searches for a cake recipe on his phone. Something special, indeed. Shiro would be so happy to come home to a cake. It would be the best anniversary gift, keith is sure of it.

 

He’s never been a very good cook - Shiro usually takes care of the whole ‘preparing meals’ thing, and while Keith is amazing at using the microwave and ordering pizza, he wants  _ today's  _ dinner to be more special. Naturally, he starts with the cake, because it will need to cool down before he can put any icing on it.

 

The recipe  _ seems  _ simple. And the cake in the pictures looks absolutely stunning.

 

It says to stir it with a wooden spoon, but they don’t have one, and the electronic hand mixer is so much faster anyway -

 

Okay, maybe not. All that did was get the dry mixture to fly everywhere, sending Keith into a coughing fit. He almost droops the bowl, but grabs it a the last second. Only a little bit of the flour ends up in a pile on the ground. 

 

He debates calling Hunk over, to get some help from someone who actually works in a bakery, but decides against it. It’s only a cake, he can do this.

 

There’s not much space in the kitchen, and with the counters being taken up with all the ingredients that Keith had dragged out, he finds himself sitting at the fitchen table, carefully pushing the flower vases to the edge, far away from himself so that doesn’t accidently knock them over.

 

Milo, ever wanting attention, leaps up onto the table, content with sitting just to the right of Keith, watching his every move as he cracks three eggs into the bowl, then grabs a regular spoon to mix it - he’s learned his lesson from the electronic mixer.

 

He puts half a cup of butter in the microwave to soften it up, and then after a moment’s though, he dumps a bunch of icing sugar onto the yet-to-be-melted butter. It’s cake, after all. It will taste better with a bit more sugar.

 

He pre-heats the oven to 350 degrees, just like the recipe tells him to.

 

He’s holding the cake mix in one hand, a opened jug of milk in the other and measuring cups balanced between them, going back over to the kitchen table. 

 

Until, that is, he accidentally steps on Casey’s tail.

 

The black cat lets out a terrific yowl, and turns on Keith’s leg, clawing at him.

 

Keith lets out a small yelp and almost in slow motion, he falls.

 

He’s close enough to the table that he tries to toss the thing’s he’d holding onto the safe, flat surface, but misses.

 

Ikea tables aren’t the strongest, or sturdiest by any extent of the imagination, but Keith is still surprised when he lands on it and a loud ‘CRACK’ echos around the kitchen. The milk jug had landed on its side, the contents of it flowing out of it like an unstoppable river. The stainless steel bowl that had contained the cake mixture, is upside-down and somehow dented. The measuring cups are nowhere to be seen. And the table is very clearly broken down the middle.

 

Keith says, “Oh fuck.”

 

And Casey hisses at him, before trodding off towards the office. Milo is still purring.

 

“Fuckfuckfuckfuck fuckity FUCK!” Keith looks around the kitchen, fully taking in the disaster that he’d made.

 

The microwave beeps. Keith’s eye twitches.

 

Some of the butter had overflowed, splattering across the bottom and sides of the microwave. The icing sugar didn’t melt into it properly, and is smoking slightly.

 

“Fuck.” 

 

He grabs the bowl of what’s left of the butter, “fuck!” it’s too hot. It burns into his fingers. He doesn’t drop it, though. He puts it on the counter and then runs his hands under freezing cold water, repeating the word ‘fuck’ about half a million times. 

 

After he’s sure that his hands won’t develop third-degree burns, Keith turns, a stubborn look on his face. 

 

He’s ruined the cake mixture but he can use the butter to make a nice icing and then get one of those Betty Crocker cake mixes from Target. He doesn’t even entertain the idea of trying to make his own cake again. 

 

He’s running out of time, though. Shiro will be home in less than an hour.

 

He pulls out another bowl from the cupboard, telling himself that he’ll clean up  _ after  _ he’s successfully made at least one edible dish. He dumps the melted butter is, then crinkles his nose as he tries to remember what else goes in icing. Confectioners sugar, for one. He grabs the half-used bag and pours the rest in. Too bad he’s lost the measuring cups, he could have really used them right about now. He bites the inside of his mouth. Milk? He glances over to the puddle of it on the floor, where Milo is currently licking up some of the spilled milk.

 

Water will have to do. The sink is full of dirty dishes, but Keith pushes them out of the way, turning on the tap and letting some water pour into the bowl.

 

His mouth twists as he thinks of what to do next.

 

He grabs the electronic mixer, turning it on high and hoping for the best.

 

Icing mixture flies everywhere. It hits Keith in the face, dripping down over his shirt. It splatters across the cupboards, and reaches as high as the ceiling. Some of it ends up on Shiro’s houseplants, which are carefully lined up by the windowsill.

 

The still-hot butter that hadn’t mixed in with the water yet burns keith’s face. He drops the bowl. It lands on it’s side, covering keith’s bare feet in sticky, sugary soup.

 

“Oh, god.” He groans. 

 

A shower. That’s what he needs. If he hurries, he should be able to shower, then run over to the store and buy a premade cake, with icing and everything. Maybe he could even get them to write a little message on it. It won’t be as special as his own cake could have been, but it’s better than nothing.

 

He runs off to the shower, splashing through the puddle of milk.

 

The water is pleasantly warm, and Keith washes off his body quickly, lathering up soap and slapping it onto himself, hoping that it will get the worst of the stickiness away.

 

Maybe he takes too long in the shower, because suddenly, just as he’s about to turn off the water, someone’s banging on the bathroom door.

 

“Fuck.” He curses out loud, jumping out of the shower and throwing a towel around his waist. “Fuck.”

 

Shiro must have come home early.

 

That’s when Keith hears the fire alarm go off.

 

“Fuck.”

 

He opens the door, slowly, because he’s dreading what he will find. 

 

“Shiro?” 

 

“The table is broken. There is icing on the ceiling. The stove is on fire. Explain.” 

 

Keith blinks at him. 

 

Shiro continues when he doesn’t get an answer back right away, “no, wait. Don’t explain. Fire. We need to get out.” 

 

He grabs keith’s arm, and drags him out of the apartment. 

 

“What about the cats?” Is all Keith can gasp out. 

 

“I saw them jump out the window, they’re fine.” Shiro snakes an arm around Keith’s waist when they’re safely outside, and digs into his pocket for his phone, calling 911. “You okay?” he asks, softly.

“Yeah.” Keith replies faintly.

 

Shiro gives him a tight lipped smile, before giving their address to the phone operator. Other tenants start pouring out of the building. Keith is too aware of the fact that the only thing he’s wearing is a towel around his waist.

 

“Keith. What the fuck?” Shiro says as soon as he hangs up the phone.

 

“I tried to um. Make a cake.”

 

“You what?”

 

“Cooking - or, baking, I guess. For our anniversary.” Keith presses himself close to Shiro, looking up at him through his eyelashes, “I wanted to make something nice for us.”

 

What he’s not expecting is Shiro to throw his head back and laugh until there’s tears in his eyes.

 

Keith punches him lightly, “don’t laugh!”

 

Shiro is still laughing when he bends down, cupping Keith’s jaw and kissing him gently.

 

“God I just-” He’s still laughing, and covers his mouth with the hand that’s not pressed against Keith’s back, “-you tried to cook and now you’re naked on the street and everybody is shooting us dirty looks.” He bends down, capturing Keith’s lips in yet another kiss.

 

“It’s not funny!” Keith protests.

 

“It’s not.” Shiro says, though he’s not hiding his huffs of laughter, “Keith, Keith, baby.”

 

Keith looks up at him, cheeks bright red.

 

“You wanted to make this anniversary special, right?”

 

“Yeah, I guess.”

 

Shiro grins, “well, you did. One thing’s for sure, I’m never going to forget this.”

 

Keith glares, grabbing shiro by the back of his neck and dragging him down for another kiss.

 

“I love you.” Shiro says sincerely when Keith lets go of him.  

 

Keith swallows. Looks towards their window, where smoke is pouring out. He can hear sirens in the distance. Casey and Milo are taking advantage on everybody being in one place, going from person to person, getting as much attention as they possibly can.

 

Keith is standing there, in nothing but a towel. He broke the table. There’s icing on the ceiling. When Shiro opens up the microwave, he’s going to find a buttery mess. Sometime in the future they’re going to stumble across the lost measuring cups. The milk will leave a stain on the hardwood floor.

 

He smiles. So hard that his mouth starts to hurt.

 

The man that he adores with his enture heart is standing by his side, making light of a less-than-ideal situation.

 

“I love you too.” 

**Author's Note:**

> The two cats I used in this story are mine. (Well, one of them is. The Casey in my life went missing the beginning of winter, and we live in a dangerous place for cats so it's unlikely that he's survived.) I wrote them exactly how they are -- Milo is awful to sleep with as he paws at your face, and always wants attention. Casey likes attention, too, but if you stopped petting him he would attack you until you pet him again. I love them both with all my heart, and I hope that you liked them from this story, too :,)   
> If you want to see what they look like here u go https://twitter.com/Castellation_/status/895003653777399808
> 
> Also. Pls leave comments and kudos they make me so, so happy :)
> 
> (if u want feel free to follow me on tumblr, @cas-tellation


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